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How smart is the Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone?

The Samsung Galaxy S3, revealed a couple of days ago, definitely sports some of the best hardware specs around, but it also looks like Samsung have managed to integrate software functions that give a new meaning for the word “smart” in smartphones. Marketed by Samusng as human-centric functions, these are features exclusive to the Samsung Galaxy S3. On a personal level, I feel like the smart features on the Samsung Galaxy S3 represent a major improvement towards simplifying tasks on your smartphone. Granted, we expect more from a thinking smartphone, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

So let’s take a quick look at the software functions that make the Galaxy S3 a truly unique smartphone:

S Voice

Voice recognition software has been available in some form or another for the past decade, but it was Apple’s Siri, a personal voice assistant that brought a more ‘natural’ form of voice recognition to smartphones. Siri was a major marketing factor for the iPhone 4S and Samsung has decided to come up with a personal voice assistant of their own. Dubbed S-Voice, this feature of the S3 allows you to control your smartphone only by using your voice. Commands can be personalized, but possible uses for S-Voice include unlocking the smartphone, launching apps, taking pictures with the 8MP camera, music control (such as stop, play, pause and skip), snoozing the alarm, turning on the Wi-Fi /Bluetooth and more. S-Voice is available in the following languages: British, USA English, Italian, German, French, Spanish and Korean.

Social Tag

Possibly one of the most interesting intelligent functions of the Galaxy S3 is the social tagging feature. According to Samsung, the Galaxy S3 is capable of identifying and properly tagging the people in your photos as long as you have them added as contacts (with an attached picture). If this face recognition software works as Samsung claims it does, it is one of the most interesting smartphone capabilities ever. The Social Share ability takes matters one step further, by allowing you to instantly share the pictures with the contacts the S3 has recognized in the photo.

Direct Call

Direct Call allows you to make a call simply by lifting the phone to your ear while writing a message to someone, or while specific contact details are brought up to the display. Just lift, and speak. Personally, I can think of many scenarios where this could go wrong and I’m not actually sure that the couple of extra touches that you save are really all that important, but it is a nice feature to have.

Smart Stay

This is definitely the most useful of all the smart functions available on the Galaxy S3. Smart Stay detects if the user is looking at the display and keeps the display from timing out until the user looks away. A very useful feature for those of us that regularly read text on our smartphones, as I’m sure you’ll agree.

Smart Alerts

If you’ve been away from your smartphone for a while, it’s possible that you have missed a few calls and messages. Granted, Android smartphones always notified you of the stuff you missed, but the Galaxy S3 takes one step further and vibrates to inform you of the action that happened while you were away. Not exactly the most revolutionary of features!

So there you have it! These are the smart, human-centric functions of the Samsung Galaxy S3. While other smartphones (think of the HTC One X) might stand up to the S3 hardware-wise, these smart functions will make sure Samsung’s Galaxy S3 stands out from the increasingly populated Android smartphone market. Make sure you drop us a line in the comment section below and let us know how you feel about these software tweaks!

Growing up in my father's PC store, I was surrounded by and developed a passion for technology ever since I was in kindergarten. However, advancements made in the technology world continue to amaze me on a daily basis! I've been writing about the Android OS since back in October 2008, when Google and HTC launched the first Android smartphone ever, the T-Mobile G1 / HTC Dream. Although I'm no company's fanboy, Android is the mobile OS I devoutly support.